Reflective
by visceraEffect
Summary: He knows that he can't shrink away from danger anymore, that people look up to him as a leader and as a strong one. He knows he is no longer fifteen and scared of everything and with reason. He can no longer turn back and forget that the blood of thousands was caused by his hands. But, he no longer is lonely, and yet, at the very top, it seems as if he is lonelier than ever.


A/N: So this is retardedly OOC, but I'm attempting to look at this in a somewhat AU fashion, involving if it were a little more realistic and stuff. I really did fail on this didn't I? D8 I don't own any of these characters~

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Sometimes, he feels like running outside and shedding the tightness of his suit to flounce and prance in the grass. Sometimes, he feels like skipping out of the mansion and sticking his tongue out to catch the snowflakes. Sometimes, he feels like sitting on the roof and sleeping away his worries with the sunshine light against his face.

Sometimes, he wishes that he had had a different father and that he wouldn't have to be burdened with the lives of many and the strongest title in the mafia world.

Sawada Tsunayoshi stares at himself from the corner of his eye, watching himself look back at him with the same disinterested, blank expression on his face. He sighs and turns back to the pile of paperwork and casually leans back, reclining in the fine leather chair that still smells of fresh leather. He closes his eyes and steadies his breath. Maybe he can catch a nap before someone catches him.

A sudden jerk of his body and the pen on the desk falls from the impact of his knee against the walnut wood desk.

Tsuna curses loudly and rubs his knee, but leans down to pick up the pen. Of course, it had to be the pen that was the most fragile, and before he can even react, the gold-rimmed pen breaks apart in his hand, spilling red ink over his fingers. Scooting backwards, the ink falls on the richly embroidered carpet, red against white.

Like blood.

He inhales sharply, looking away and looking for a napkin to wipe away the red. Tsuna doesn't keep tissues in his office and he swears under his breath. Holding his hands out in front of him, he can't help but think that it looks like blood, and it reminds him of the many times that his gloves have been coated with the liquid. Flames, evaporating the blood to nothing.

He wishes his Flames can do that to his memories, to burn them away until all he can remember is his name.

Maybe only then, he could escape.

Tsuna shakes his head, and drops his hands to his sides. The ink has already dried and he tests it by rubbing his previously-drenched fingers on his black dress pants. Nothing. He breathes a sigh of relief. The cost of those pants outweighed the ink of the pen greatly.

But by now, the mafia don can't concentrate and chooses to stand next to one of the grand windows that lines his office, staring down at the garden. But the garden doesn't look like a garden. Instead, the green is replaced with a layer of soft, marshmallow white, and the trees look like the little spindly branches that he used to throw around as a child because he couldn't lift anything bigger.

The red is still on his hands as he presses his fingertips, lightly, against the glass. Almost like a prisoner. He breathes against the window and it fogs up, but he wipes it away. Beads of moisture cling to the surface, marring the winter wonderland beneath him.

Imperfection is something no one in the underworld can handle. Tsuna turns away. The snow makes him remember things that he didn't want to remember. A little girl crying, shaking her dead parents' bodies, because the damned Family had to involve the citizens. Families crushed under flaming wooden beams, crushed by iron fists. Blood staining his own subordinates, splattered over their faces. Yamamoto's face scarred and his breathing shallow, carted off to a deathly white room to be operated on by deathly white surgeons wearing deathly white, sanitary clothing.

Tsuna clenches his fist and tries to forget. Breathe in, and out. In, and out. Calm. Gokudera told him that it helped him a long time ago, back when his explosive attitude matched his explosive weapons. Gokudera has calmed down a lot, now. Tsuna still trusts him the same way, though.

He retreats back to his leather chair and just as he sits down on it, the grand doors creak open slightly and a familiar face peeks through.

His wife. His wife that is not Sasagawa Kyoko, the golden beauty with a dazzling smile that belongs to someone else now.

Sawada Tsunayoshi's heart clenches, but he forces a flawless smile on his perfect face. The dark-haired, pale-skinned lady returns his smile, a fine dusting of pink on her cheeks. He remembers those cheeks flushed red as apples and her mouth open as she lays on the bed and he on top. They are so vividly different that he sometimes believes that his wife is two different people. But people high up in mafia families tend to be like that so he pays it no mind anymore.

Tender, he reminds himself, tenderness in speaking with spouses.

"Is something wrong?" The words tumble out of his mouth like a jumbled melody and he almost hits himself for the callousness in his voice. She has caught him at a wrong time, but she bravely moves closer to the mafia don.

"N-no, Tsu-kun. I just wanted...to see how you were doing. It's been five hours and you haven't left your study, so I got worried." Her eyes are downcast, eyelashes thick with mascara appearing demure. Tsuna doesn't buy it at all. They're all maniacs in the end.

"Ah, I'm fine. Just got a little swept up in all this busywork." He doesn't want those words to come out this time. Tsuna is so accustomed to lying that he never thinks twice anymore. Now, his problem is being honest, brutally honest like he was when he was fifteen. He wants to scream at her, he wants to choke her and scream that _she's not true to herself, that no one is true anymore, that they're all tainted and black and wallowing in their own despair and dropping themselves into the deepest pits of Hell._

Tsuna wants to believe there's an all-forgiving God in the world, but he has seen the destruction a single man can do. He is that man, and he knows all too well that there is no such thing as God.

She nods and retraces her steps out, silent and shy and like all the other ladies he has courted and bedded and extorted riches from. He realizes she never noticed the red on his hands and scoffs. He's too high on her pedestal for her to notice his numerous flaws hidden by foundation and concealer.

And because of this, he can't trust her. He can't pour out his feelings like she does to him; he nods and smiles and reassuringly runs his fingers through her lady-like hair. She has never done that to him, and a part of him is sad, but the other is happy. He doesn't want to be recognized by the mafia, doesn't want to reveal his inner soul to them. He's fine the way he is, high up and untouchable by normal standards, surrounded by a fortress of defenses and walls and masks.

Just like everyone else.

He has never felt so lonely in his life.

Tsuna's fist slams into the desk with a resounding crack and it relieves his anxiety temporarily. Temporary. Xanxus and his liquor. A crude smile curls on the Tenth's lips. He hasn't heard from the Varia boss in a long time. He wonders for a second if the man has drunk himself to death, but he remembers Lussuria and the ever doting Levi by the alcoholic's side.

The Tenth has those kinds of people by his side, too.

Whether he lets them in, is another problem.

Xanxus is so welcoming compared to him, Tsuna realizes. Simple and easy to read. His smile falls and shatters against the ground, wasted and used up. His eyes turn towards the windows again, _an escape from the dreariness of his richly suffocating room_; the sky is gray and ominous, but the ground is white and sparkling.

The snow outside looks so appealing. Tsuna is drawn to it, a moth to light. He will be burned for his actions; he will remember all the times the snow of innocence was stained with the truth, with blood, and with discarded bullets and articles of clothing.

He no longer cares about his own feelings. Too blinded by success, blinded by the mere thought of more wealth and more prestige.

Tsuna wishes he can stop looking back and feeling regret and guilt. He couldn't save that girl's parents and he couldn't do anything for her. _She ran and disappeared in the crowd. He remembered her pigtails had red ribbons. The red ribbons in that prostitute's hair seemed familiar to him when he walked by an alleyway. Dark eyes stared at him, almost begging him to take her body in exchange for money. Her skinny frame was accentuated by the revealing clothing. He remembered her. It had been years and years past. He couldn't do a thing, couldn't lift a finger to change her fate._

He wishes he can change the world.

He wishes many, many lofty things that he can never accomplish.

The world was never his, but he can surely pretend.

Tsuna can pretend that everything is alright, and that nothing will hurt him anymore, that pain is just a distant memory that he can shove under covers of happiness and masks of glory. He can pretend that there is no starvation and prostitution, and that people aren't being slaughtered for being a certain way that they can't change.

Tsuna can delude himself into believing that the snow is still white and still pure. He can believe that one day, another blizzard will whip through and change everything, the tides of destiny and the winds of change. He will be able to escape one day, one day, and see the sun and look at his own hands and not see childrens' heads and guts spilled out over the lines of his palms.

In the end, what is pure? Snow falls like heaven's tears on the ground, soaking up the burning tendrils of hate and heat from the world.

Tsuna feels his pulse, red, raw, and alive. Impure, he thinks blankly. If he were cold, maybe he'd be a little more innocent. A little more less guilty. A little more like the first winters' snowfall.

The expanse of white is so beautiful to him, so pristine. A thick layer of innocence he prays will never be ruined.

Tsuna turns away from the view and heads back to his desk to finish the last of his work for the day. He doesn't go back to the window, and he doesn't see the sun chip away at the snow, reducing it to dirty slush and sluggish half-frozen water.

Sawada Tsunayoshi turns a blind eye to the troubles that follow him like spectres with scythes, ready to cut him down for his numerous mistakes and sins.

He knows he's going to Hell anyways.

What's another dead body to him?

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Reviews appreciated!


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